Status Updates

It has been a long time since I blogged about anything. I have had a great number of ideas, but got busy with doing a lot of things at the same time. I will blog about some of those ideas later.

A colleague of mine, suggested I start a pure technical blog to document my work with technology for the technology geeks. I was reluctant in starting a pure technical blog since I believe there are too many of those out there anyway. But, I have increasingly noticed my habit of forgetting, important things, especially when I do some analysis years ago and try and remember what it was that I did.

Hence, the technical blog is more like a research journal and is actually for me to document my work. I will feel great if someone actually benefits from it.

You can access the blog at http://vikrantresearch.blogspot.com. It is aptly labelled Memoirs of a Certified Geek.

Are the IIT's obsolete?

I have had a recent animated debate with a close friend DP on a topic after watching the movie '3 Idiots'. This debate is neither new nor original. It was the standard, what can we do to improve research in India. (Inspired ofcourse from watching '3 Idiots').

Did you know that we do not have a SINGLE nobel prize winner from free India? Don't believe me check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_laureates_of_India)? Ofcourse, Mother Terresa and Amratya Sen are the only Indian "Citizens" to have won the nobel prize. The former came from Yugoslavia and the later actually stays in London. But in Science and Tech, we have had people of "Indian Origin" getting the nobel prizes, but not one true Indian making it till now. It is a strange statistic after so many years of independence. (Funny, we had nobel prize winners before independence).

On a related note, I was just checking out a video on TED about Pranav Mistry's Sixth Sense technology. Amazing, Pranav is surely one of the foremost inventors of the world. I checked his profile on Linked-In. B.E Gujrat Uni, M.Tech (Desg) IIT Mumbai and then MIT. Again, MIT takes credit for his inventions.

These observations beg the question, when will India become truly innovative and when can our own people(who clearly have the talent) have the platform to showcase their inventions and bring them to the world, independently of the Americas?

Again, none of these questions are new and have been discussed to death before in casual talks. DP and I had opposite views on this topic.

I am of the opinion, that the very "pride" of our countries the IIT's have lead to a class based system in our education that is actually hampering research and original thinking. According, to me we need an overhaul of the higher education system, making it more in line with the way the west works.

Here is an example, the US awards an "MS" (Master of Science) degree and the UK an "MSc." (Master of Science Degree). In India, if you have an MSc. you are looked down upon as it is considered an inferior degree. AFAIK(though DP disagrees) there is no equivalent to our B.Tech or B.E Degrees in the West.

To understand this further, one needs to look at the history of the IIT's. They were formed when independent India desperately needed native engineers to work on it's infrastructure projects in the 1950's-60's. Setup, by foreign hands(America, Russia, Germany, UK) their curriculum was/is designed to promote top-quality engineers and they have been more than successful in that. However, there is a catch- their curriculum was not designed for "Original Thinking" or "Mixed Thinking". Worse, by making them exclusively engineering colleges there is no concept of courses outside engineering. One cannot major in Mech. Engineering and Minor in History or Music at the IIT's. Somehow, I believe that this is an essential spark for a creative environment.

Secondly, the govt. still grants a disproportionate amount of money into the IIT's at the costs of other universities creating a deliberate class system. This has the impact that actual universities(The IIT's are not universities) are less funded and hence are less research oriented than the IIT's.

This is not to say, the IITs have not produced good stuff. They have produced great things. However, they seem to be more a training ground for people to go to the US and produce the final product rather than producing it themselves. The IIT-JEE Entrance exam, the toughest in the world is an example of what is wrong. The exam makes people miss the best 2 years of their lives (high-school) cramming theoretical Physics, Maths etc. This is good as it produces great engineers. It is bad, since those years could lead to great inventions, but no one has time to do these as they have to study. (Steve Wozniak who started Apple, made the PC when he was 16-17 and in high-school. Imagine, if he had to study for the IIT-JEE exam, what would have happened).

The main reason why this may be, is because we in India join colleges for "jobs". I remember my final year, when people went into great depression when they did not get "jobs". As Nandan Nilekani says, we have had a lot of ideas that have come of age like those of "entrepreneurs","demographic dividend" but the idea that "research" is something fundamental has not yet sinked in. Hence, our industries have mostly been service oriented, clever use of economic imbalances and yet we do not have the kind of hi-tech research that can propel a country to new heights.

We now face a peculiar problem in our higher-education. We need the millions of trained engineers to feed our service industries, and yet we need to start producing great researchers. My verdict is that we should probably disband the class based system of the IIT's and concentrate on holistic university environments throughout the country. People, should be admitted as in the west based on their overall performance in school(Class XII in India is a joke right now) with the first two years letting them explore their talents. The last two years can decide what they actually want to do. This is to a certain extent impractical in India, simply due to the sheer competition that India has. But, I am sure we can construe a practical solution to the problem. Hence, I say convert the IIT's to regular universities(albeit top ones) and regularize the degrees. So, everyone can be a B.S(or BSc.) with a specialization in a certain type of engineering. Let the actual branch be decided on the first year of campus, rather than preselecting it during the entrance itself and for god-sakes pour money into research. If nothing else, it is worth noting that now we have 10-12 IIT's but the only institutes that are well-known for their research is the IISc and the ISI we only have 2.

However, my friend DP believes that it is better to re-structure the IIT's courses albeit, maintaining the class system that has generated because of it. He thinks, if the IIT's change course the others will follow.

What say the rest of you?

3 Companies

"Itna paisa mein itna hi milega"- said "Bai" by Bai. Though, we IT workers are a little more sophisticated than that, the sentiment is the same and if you think you are on the lower side of the pay scale, I have been doing some work on the kind of companies and how they compensate employees. So, read on!!

Broadly, in my interactions, I came across three kinds of companies. The first are your general IT Services/Solutions providers, the second are the in-house IT departments and the third are product companies who have setup R&D departments in India. My analysis here is of technical delivery positions only, not sales or management.

General IT Services/Solution providers, hire people en-mass usually to fulfill a project's immediate requirement. They don't pay well!! The reason, for that is the way accounting is done within the companies. The business of these companies is services and their biggest cost is employees. They have to reduce the cost of employees. A perfect example is a "Grade Mix" metric which their projects have, which try to ensure that the overall team mix includes lower-cost trainees.

The other thing, to be noted about such firms are - a) They are not to focused on developer productivity to a large extent, preferring to hire more people than develop conditions for better developer productivity. This is actually better for them, especially in Time and Material Projects where they can bill per person. For example, no such firm will ever worry about lighting or how developers are seated which are known to increase productivity by 5-10%. The marginal increase is more than compensated for by the number of developers.(or so they think!!) This is not to say they don't care about developers, it's just their business model.

This is also reflected in their compensation models. If you ever interview for them, they shall simply take your current compensation add a reasonable factor to it(depending on urgency of requirement) and that's your new compensation. They do not take into account talent!! Frankly, I think they don't need it. They need a few talented individuals, but not "Rock-stars". It's just the nature of work they do.

In fact, it is kind of assumed in these companies that what employees make as lower base salaries, will be compensated for by "on-site" assignments. Hence, there is a huge jostle in these companies for assignments to the west.

For these companies the real talent are it's management. They will go out of the way to hire management consultants at high prices, since they realize maximum gains by having a smart management team.

In-house IT houses, have the reverse problem. They need their developers, and pay handsomely. They take care of developer productivity and go out of their way to make sure the developers have the best facilities possible. The reasons are simple!! 1) Most of their work is very boring!! 2) There is usually no on-site opportunity.

I have recently had friends join the IT arms of big investment banks. While, they are enjoying the perks and other things, some of them are already contemplating the next switch thanks to the work. This is not to say, that all their work is boring. Indeed, Fidelity Investments has given us the "DOJO" framework and some of their work is scintillating. But, all this comes in cycles, only when a major transitional project comes along.

By all means, these are the companies you should join, if you want a good salary with a stable life, since in general during business as usual conditions, these companies have predictable working hours and patterns.

The last kind of company is the R&D or product firms that are mushrooming, in India. These guys want talent , they want productivity, they want it all and are ready to pay for it. However, there is a catch!! Most companies(barring a few) have set-up R&D or "Product Development" centers in India, to reduce cost!!! Of-course they want to leverage talent in India as well, but they don't do it the way they do in their home countries. Usually, fringe work of a core product is given to the India Centers, with the main design and important work still being done in the US/UK or wherever else they are setup.

In the new decade I sincerely hope that Product and R&D based "Indian" companies would rise in prominence to compete with their global counterparts, as dependence on cost reduction is removed as the fuel that actually runs the IT industry in India currently. We need to do to the IT industry , what Japan did to the automotive industry, and I know a lot of effort is going into this. I hope to see some exciting new things, in the coming years....

Of course, there are exceptions to every category of companies I mentioned above(So, don't flame me saying, my company is of type X but does this!!). I would love feedback from others, on how they think their company works and pays.

A happy and propsperous new year and new decade to all!!!